


Life Support Hotline: 1-800-Wedding-Ring

by lilacsandlavender



Category: Bates Motel (2013)
Genre: But mostly angst, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Gen, I'm so sorry alex, but it had to be done, heavy on the headcanons too lol, if you read this whole thing you ARE entitled to financial compensation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-05
Updated: 2021-01-05
Packaged: 2021-03-11 07:01:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 7
Words: 20,001
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28467216
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lilacsandlavender/pseuds/lilacsandlavender
Summary: When Theresa Reyes Romero gives her son Alex a piece of jewelry, she has no idea how important it will become to him, for he'll hold onto it both physically and emotionally from inheritance to death.
Relationships: Norma Bates/Alex Romero
Comments: 27
Kudos: 13





	1. Mother Knows (but Not Best)

**Author's Note:**

> Firstly, I feel the need to put the disclaimer that this isn't a real self-help number (though I hope that's obvious). Secondly, TW//su*cide is mentioned repeatedly throughout the story.  
> Anyways, I really thought it was touching how Alex gave Norma his mother's ring! So while I probably made a mountain out of a molehill with it, I hope you like the brief guest appearances the jewelry makes in each chapter.

_Prologue_

“Alex? Is that you?”

It was a late December night when twenty-two year-old Alex Romero dropped his duffel bag in the foyer of his parent’s house – well, technically he still lived there too; he just hadn’t been around in a while – and followed the sound of his mother’s voice and smell of something cooking into the kitchen. Poking his head past the doorway to the room, he took in the familiar floral yellow wallpaper and white-tile backsplash, but it was the sight of his mom that made him stop short.

Theresa Reyes Romero stood with her back to the pot of what Alex guessed was probably soup, for she had an affinity for it, which sat on the stove that very well could be as old as the house, and beamed with bright eyes and a warm smile at the sight of him. Though he was wet from the rain outside and hadn’t had the chance to clean up since leaving the airport, Theresa wiped her hands to add a nonexistent mess to the multitude of past stains on her pale green apron and extended her arms to welcome her only child home. 

“Oh, it’s been too long since I’ve seen you last. Remind me why you enlisted into the army?”

Alex reciprocated her hug, chuckling “Hey, mom”, and realized that it would only take one year away to show him that he missed his mother’s embrace, the one and only that always was a mix of just the right amount of comfort and gentleness. When she pulled away from their grasp to look him over, he immediately missed her touch but didn’t have time to contemplate the situation, for she frowned and shooed him into one of the dining room chairs, muttering something across the lines of “Good lord, they don’t feed you enough in the service.” 

Complying with her direction, he sat down and quickly had a bowl placed in front of him, and as he watched his mom serve the contents from the stovetop into the dish, he felt like the eight year-old kid who had been fed homemade chicken noodle soup when he’d been sick with the flu. 

Theresa plopped down at the end of the table and smiled once more as she watched him eat, her dissatisfaction with his physique disappearing with the appearance of his appetite. With a nod of satisfaction, she said, “Tell me about the army, Alex. What are they having you do?” 

He told her about the last current months he’d had – not that it was much different from his first year of service before that – talking about how he and the others were constantly moving from station to station and the way they prepared for combat. He told her about the hardest parts of being in the military, and also about the more light-hearted things his buddies had said and done. As they chatted into the night, however, he couldn’t stop thinking about her initial inquiry of why he joined the army. 

It wasn’t that hard of a question to answer. In fact, it was pretty simple: Alex had never remembered a time when his father wasn’t a careless, money-hungry ass of a man, and a drunk one at that – which probably explained his whereabouts to be at a bar at the moment. So Alex had booked it out of White Pine Bay the moment he’d seen the chance and had barely looked back. The only reason he came to visit the town he’d grown up in was because he and his mother had always been close, or at least had a decent relationship as compared to the one between him and his dad, and it hadn’t felt right to outright abandon her, especially after everything she’d done for him in all his years alive. 

Then when he’d seen her during a permitted visit last year, he’d gotten scared and began to regret his choice, for she had acquired deep bags under her eyes, feet dragging uncharacteristically, and her skin had taken on an odd tint. When she’d spoken with him, her voice sounded off, and after he’d found a stash of drugs not very well-hidden in the bathroom cabinet, he’d signed her up for rehab immediately. He didn’t know where they’d come from, or if his father knew (or even more importantly: cared), but the fact that someone as innocent as his gentle mother would be so lazy with the secrecy and nonchalant with the storage of illegal substances that probably came from some Pine Bay scumbag scared him. He’d nearly withdrawn from the army to take care of her, but she’d somehow convinced him to finish what he’d started – she was stubborn that way – and so he’d left once more, unknowingly worsening her condition. But he didn’t know that then, and looking at her now he took note that she looked fine. Great, actually. 

There was a healthy glow to her dimples, life in the tips of her fingers as she drummed them contentedly while he told her about life, her posture not giving way to the defeated slouch he’d seen before, and even her curly hair of near-ebony that he’d inherited seemed to look healthier. 

Maybe that was part of the reason why it had shocked him so badly when she took her life just a week and a half after that welcome-home meal and conversation at the dinner table. 

The morning on the day of her death he’d been contemplating going to visit some old friends in town for the day, whether it just be for lunch or something that would take longer. His hesitation had stemmed from guilt over leaving his mother while he was technically in town to see her, and the ridiculousness of his worry had been promoted by Theresa who had, once again in that unyielding nature of hers, shooed him out the door. 

But not before she’d pulled him aside while he was pulling on the brown leather jacket she’d given him two years ago, grasped his hand, and pressed something small and cold and solid into his palm. 

When he’d unfurled his fingers, it had taken him a minute to realize what he was looking at, but as the mid-sized, circular diamond set on a silver band glinted back up at him, recognition set along with her partner emotion, confusion. 

“What-”

“It’s yours now, Alex,” Theresa had interrupted him, nodding at the piece of jewelry with confidence.

He’d shaken his head with the absence of any understanding, bewildered as to why he was in possession of such a feminine and pricy heirloom that was his mother’s wedding ring. “I don’t- I don’t understand,” he’d started. “Why don’t you want it anymore?” 

If his memory served him correctly, he couldn’t remember a time when she’d ever taken it off. His first recollection of the ring was the light from his childhood bedroom lamp dancing off it as she held open his favorite bedtime storybook; and while some women took their wedding ring off to wash the dishes, Theresa never had, which was most likely the culprit that had slightly discolored the metal. 

Theresa had smiled softly at this and replied, “It’s not that I don’t want it anymore; it’s that _I_ want _you_ to have it.”

Lost at her clarification, his thick eyebrows scrunched together, and his voice was laced with confusion. “Is this some sort of early Christmas present? Because, no offense, but I don’t think it would even fit me...”

“Oh, my sweet boy,” she had chuckled, reaching to briefly tenderly cup his jaw in her tiny palm. Perhaps that’s why that gesture of affection had come so naturally to him to practice later in life. “While it’s technically yours, it’s not meant for you to keep for forever.”

Alex had stared at her blankly, still utterly perplexed.

There was a dreamy, far-away look on Theresa’s face when she remade his hand into a fist around her ring. “I want you to... I want you to give this to the girl who steals your heart and gives you hers.”

“Steals my-?” The eyebrows had shot upwards in surprise and then gone back to being within very close proximity of one another. “I don’t have a girlfriend, mom.” 

“Well maybe you don’t have one _right now_ ,” she’d replied, “But you’re a good person, Alex. A kind, caring one with a big heart, even if you don’t always show it in the most expressive way. You _will_ find someone, someday, who you love and who loves you back. I just know it.” 

For some reason, Alex had doubted her in that moment, thinking about how he’d never had a real girlfriend, unless you counted Amy Matthews in the 8th grade, and she probably didn’t, seeing that after one month of the two of them dancing around any sort of feelings for one another, her family had moved out of state. 

Honestly Alex was, in a way, what one could label as a loner. Sure he had friends, and his good looks had earned him more than his fair of share of whispers and admirable stares in school, but for all his popularity, Alex was not only much more serious than the other kids, but he also kept mostly to himself. He’d never actively looked for a girlfriend, and now that he was enlisted, it was the last thing on his mind. 

Theresa had been insistent on her statement, though, and she when she put her foot down, there really wasn’t much use arguing. So all Alex could do in the moment was offer a half-knowing smile, nod, and tuck the ring into his coat pocket. Before he could step out into the light, lazy rain, Theresa had intercepted his attempt to leave one last time, throwing her arms around him in an embrace that had nearly thrown him off balance, even with his stature being taller than hers.

He hadn’t been sure whether to be more surprised at the ferocity or duration of the hug, and when she’d said, barely an octave above a whisper, “I love you so much, Alex; don’t ever forget that,”, he’d been finishing recovering from the shock of the spontaneity of it all that he’d missed the quiver of raw emotion seeping into her voice.

“I love you too,” he’d immediately replied, returning to being puzzled, but decided to not overthink the situation. _Maybe that was about the ring_ , he had thought as he bounced down the steps of the porch. He had turned back around to see his mother standing behind the screen, watching him leave, and he stopped for a moment to pat the side of his coat with reassurance that reached the corners of his smile.

“I got it!” he’d called back. “I’ll give it to her. To, uh…”

Theresa had laughed at his amnesia – and if he had looked a little closer at her face in that instant, he would have seen a glimmer of sadness in her dark brown eyes – and completed his sentence: “To the girl who takes the stars from the sky and puts them in your eyes every time you look at her.”

Those were the last words he would hear her say.

When he arrived back that evening, there was no smell of soup cooking on the stove. There was no warm greeting of if it was him at the door (even though they both knew it always was). The house was a bit colder than it usually was, and when it registered to Alex that all the lights in the house were off, he knew something was wrong.

She was on her bed, slumped to the side, and cold to the touch when Alex attempted to shake her awake.

The rest of his visit was a blur to him. It was one with three phone calls: one to his father, which Alex had never wished more than in that moment that he would – or maybe wouldn’t? – pick up; another to 911 that he didn’t think he’d ever have to make; and the last to the local funeral home. It was one that had him angry at himself for not checking the house more thoroughly for the pills his mother had overdosed on. It was one that left him hating himself for leaving her alone not only that day but also the day he left for the military, for he knew she’d missed him desperately while he was away.

And Alex wanted nothing more than to punch the daylights out of his father for being absent when he needed him most, for being a crappy father and even crappier husband. But he couldn’t bring himself to do it, because while Theresa hadn’t left a note explaining her suicide, he’d formulated the idea that ultimately it was his fault for deserting her to deal with Alex Senior by herself.

Additionally, Theresa had been a gentle person who hated violence, which left Alex knowing she’d rather him be the bigger person at all costs. So he threw himself back into finishing his last two required years in the service and then formulated the plan to become part of the police force of White Pine Bay. He wasn’t sure what exactly compelled him to follow that career path, but he knew it had mostly to do with invalidating his father’s incessant words that he’d never amount to anything. It had something to do with proving to himself that he could live in the town where he’d been hurt the worst, and the more he thought about the idea of being able to continue to serve in the field of protecting the common citizen, right in his hometown, appealed to him.

As for his last promise he’d made to his mom, he didn’t forget it.

When Alex was stationed in Camp Pendleton, a buddy of his introduced him to his sister, and sparks had flown.

Lindsey was beautiful, with long silky brown hair and a winner smile that turned heads wherever she went. She had a sweet charm, kind green eyes, and a plain style of clothing that somehow seemed to look good on only her. When she and Alex had agreed to marry each other, Theresa’s words had rung clear as a bell in his head…but the same something that had stopped him from laying a hand on his father caused him to put the ring back into his pocket when first considering a wedding ring for his to-be bride.

Sure, Lindsey was smart and bubbly and extremely nice, and yes, the ring was starting to become an emotional weight in the pocket he always kept it in, but it _just hadn’t felt right_. Turns out that Alex had made the right call, for a just few weeks into marriage, the pair had known marriage had been a mistake. Whether it be personality non-compatibility, long-distance relationship problems, communication issues, or all of the above, six months later the pair filed for divorce. And the moment he had the chance, Alex placed the ring into a shoebox which was promptly shoved into the back of his closet, for it had become a painful reminder of his inability to keep his mother’s final wish.

 _No, mom_ , he thought to himself. _I’m sorry, but this is the one time you were wrong. I’m just not cut out for love._

And that was the theory in which he lived by day after day, and it worked. One night stands and friends with benefits - those fleeting connections that one couldn’t even label as relationships - were just easier to manage, so he never gave a second thought about marriage, especially after seeing how his first one turned out. _I’m not going to become attached to anybody_ worked for a good, long time.

Then Norma Bates came along.


	2. Soulmate Things

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you read this whole thing, I automatically love you <3

_“Tomorrow?”_

The man behind the counter at Hardy’s Elegant Layers abruptly stopped fiddling with the piece of jewelry in his hands, half frozen in surprise, and snapped his head up to look at his customer with large, questioning eyes. “You need this ring adjusted by _tomorrow_? I don’t know if you’re aware, but these kind of things usually take at least a week-”

“Yeah, no-” Alex had promptly interrupted him, lazily waving a hand in no particular direction to emphasize his point. “I just- I just really need to have this ready by noon tomorrow, Walt. You’ve been running this shop for over ten years, so I know you have what it takes.”

Walt Hardy couldn’t argue with the sheriff’s point, but there was still hesitation in his voice when he remarked, “Well…there are still other customers’ orders ahead of you to consider…”

Alex had already been running low on patience, and it showed as, in one fluid motion, he reached into the jacket pocket and retrieved a hefty stack of money and slammed it on the glass countertop. He was getting tired of having to bribe people to do his bidding – this was the second person he’d used that tactic on today – but while he knew that this was just how things worked in this town, for some reason he never really minded when he used his position of power to pull strings for Norma.

Pushing the bundle away from himself, Alex knew Walt must have a million more questions he wanted to ask, probably some along the lines of _What’s the rush?_ and _So who’s this for?,_ so before he, someone who professionally interrogated people as part of his job, could become the interrogatee, Alex murmured, “This enough?” and glanced to the side, though there was nobody else in the store. Barely waiting for a nod of confirmation, he left the shop, the bells above his head jingling as the door swung open seemed to echo his lingering question.

But they both knew he wasn’t asking.

⋆⋆⋆

Norma Bates isn’t like anyone Alex has ever met. He’s lived in White Pine Bay his whole life, save the time when he’d served in the army, so while it sounds like he shouldn’t have much social knowledge, as the town’s sheriff of the town, he’s become a predominant figure with not only everyone knowing his name but also with connections to the most wealthy and influential citizens. It’s practically part of his duty to integrate with the small population, so when he’d seen the lights on in the old, abandoned Seafairer Motel, he’d sighed and told himself to see which one of his teenage constituents was causing trouble now.

Except it wasn’t a troublemaking, trespassing teen. Out from one of the rooms popped a woman with messily-styled hair who wore a blue flannel shirt that looked uncannily like his own, and he’d mentally scolded himself, shook his head, for first taking notice of how pretty she was instead of the suspicious sight of rolls of flooring unexpectedly poking out from the doorframe. 

The night Alex met Norma, in the rain outside her motel, he hadn’t thought much of her, other than she must be kind of crazy, because who had the mentality to think ripping up carpeting at almost 2 a.m., especially with their kid no less, was a good idea? Though it puzzled him, giving that question attention hadn’t been on the top of his list at the time, for in the beginning he’d assumed that someone who appeared so innocent to the eye as she was would simply be another face he’d see around town and eventually come to recognize. But even after he’d arrested her for killing Keith Summers, she’d kept popping into his life. 

First she’d dropped in an unsolicited manner into his office so she could practically try blackmailing him into helping her shut down the by-pass, and he’d wondered who is this woman who’s talking to me like this? By the time he overheard in line at the coffee shop that someone had told Lee Berman to his face at the city planning committee meeting that he was a dick, he already knew who they were gossiping about. And when he’d gotten the news that Zach Shelby’s corpse had been put in Norma’s bed as an act of aggression, he should have known that his time around Norma Bates was far from over. That being said, something had moved in him that night. It seeing not only Norma’s terrified face as the body was removed from her property, but also the memory of worry in her eyes she’d tried to conceal when she told him that Jake Abernathy was demanding $150,000 delivered to him by an impossible deadline, that made him realize that she needed extra help, and even more shocking to him, that he was willing to do so. 

For Sheriff Romero didn’t play favorites. He gave simple nods to people who waved at him; occasionally helped out with outdoor projects that would take multiple people to handle, like lopping off a troublesome tree branch in someone’s backyard, but just as a favor. Nothing extensive or long-term or personal. 

But then he’d found himself paying extensive, long-term, and personal favors to Norma, all from shooting Abernathy on the docks to, most recently, buying Norman a spot in Pineview, all because “crazy” now didn’t describe Norma very well, but it did explain how he’d started to feel for her. 

Because while she still had an absurd amount of trouble following her every move, Alex learned that she was more than the situations she’d suffered through. Norma was a strong person, he’d noted early on, and she had a charm that made it pretty irresistible to stay away from her. Maybe it was how the light seemed to reflect off her eyes when she was paying rapt attention to someone or something said; maybe it was the way that before long, the highlight of his morning – whole day, actually – was to hear her greet him good morning when he’d lived at the motel. No matter the reason that drew him to her, Alex knew that somewhere along the way he’d fallen for her hands that cleaned up his head and tucked his drunken self into bed, her bright smile that he was seeing more often the more time he spent around her, and the vivacious, ever-intriguing personality and expressive vocabulary that could belong to the one and only Norma Bates. 

He’d fallen for the whole of her, the good and the bad, for she has captivated his attention and heart in a way that, when thinking back to the first month of knowing her, he didn’t think possible. And honestly? It’s _terrifying_. It’s terrifying to him that he’s come to the realization that he’s able to feel this much for another person, to care about the welfare for someone else in a sense that doesn’t line up strictly in the professional sense his job entails, for it’s always been easier, almost protocol even, to stay serious and aloof and indifferent, especially when it came to women. _Keep your head down and mouth shut,_ for the most part. _Then you don’t have to clean up any messy relationship problems._

He’s always known when to put a halt on emotions, always been in touch with his feelings, or so he thought, because for the duration of time he and Norma have grown friendlier with one another, it’s like he’s been forced to sit back in some sort of out-of-body experience and watch a version of himself that he doesn’t recognize slowly dismantle the wall of concrete around his heart. Each cinderblock has been removed with care by the hands belonging to a memory of Norma – her shriek of joy when he’d pulled up driving her Mercedes, her insistence that he stay for dinner, her grip on him as he’d promised her that he’d go with her to see Bob Paris, just to name a few – and while he’s not sure how many more bricks are left, there can’t be that many left, right? If there were, he wouldn’t currently be standing in the one of the back sections of White Pine Bay’s City Hall, about to marry the woman who’d wreaked havoc on him in the most life-stimulating, soul-touching way...right? 

Alex is trying to focus on the words being said because he’s stuck in the moment prior to the present, on the feeling of Norma tucked awkwardly yet perfectly, at least to him, into his side taking permanent residence in his collection of favorite memories. 

Then finally the spell is broken when he’s interrupted by Connie saying his name, inserting it into the standard set of vows written in the laminated piece of paper in her hands. 

“Alexander, do you take this woman to be your lawfully-wedded wife-”

 _Wife_. The word jumps out to Alex, and his heart starts to race little faster at the thought that Norma is about to be his wife. Not just the motel owner by the highway, not even just “Mrs. Bates”. His _wife_. The word shouldn’t have that much impact on him since their union isn’t more than a mutual agreement on paper for financial reasons, but he loves the sound of it more than he thinks he would. When Connie asks if he’ll “love, honor, and protect” her until death did they part, it doesn’t feel like just a step he’ll have to agree to in order to get Norman help. He says “I do” without much emotion, but under the monotony, he truly means it with his entirety, means it as a promise he intends to keep and enjoy carrying out. 

And then immediately after Norma takes her turn saying the two words that hold more weight than most people realize, Connie’s asking for rings to be exchanged, and his heart nearly stops, because _this is it_. The moment he pulls the little black box out from his inside suit pocket, he’ll be a husband and Norma his wife, but it’s not the finalization of their marriage that plants a second of hesitation into the muscles needed to retrieve the jewelry. It’s the knowledge that, in a way, he’s finally letting go of the physical reminder of his mother’s death and the emotional burden that came with it. One would think that he couldn’t wait to be rid of the toll of guilt, but albeit the memory, the ring had been the single item that kept him grounded to the slowly-fading hope that maybe one day he’d be able to change the pain associated with it into happiness.

He’d been carrying the piece around again recently, and while he wasn’t sure why, it had felt like the right thing to do. Thank goodness he’d listened to his instincts because when he’d come to his house on fire that fateful night, his mind had immediately gone to the piece of jewelry, touching his leather jacket pocket to ensure that it was still there. Sure, everything else in the fire had held some sort of importance to him – they were his things after all – but none of them compared the significance of the heirloom he’d been gifted with all those years ago.

But Alex decides to take a chance now, his gut telling him that he won’t regret doing this, telling him that harassing poor Walter Hardy at the jeweler’s will be worth it, and so he reaches for the ring from its resting place, ready to complete the ceremony once and for all.

He glances at sideways at Norma’s equally frozen self, and it dawns on him that she _doesn’t have a ring for him._ It almost makes him smile, because it’s almost amusingly cute how she’s looking around as if one will appear out of nowhere, but he dare not laugh. 

“I- I got hers, Connie. Mine’s just getting adjusted.” 

_Thank you,_ he can make out Norma saying with her relaxed expression and tiny exhale of relief, and perhaps it’s his nervous brain overthinking and over complicating things, seeing signs that aren’t there, but it’s almost as if the unspoken expression of gratitude is more than just for the cover-up. 

Before he can doubt himself once more, he picks Norma’s hand, swallows back his nervousness, and slips the ring onto her finger. It looks at home there on her hand, and he thanks his lucky stars that he’d been able to accurately guess her ring size. Then he glances up to see what she thinks, and any guilt he’d had for lying to her about running late because of gas when reality he’d been running late from the jewelers' disappears, for the sight of her blinking with a slightly-agape mouth tells him all he needs to know: he’s made the right choice. 

When Norma looks up with wide, happy eyes to see him watching her reaction, his mother’s words come roaring back to him, and for the first time, they make sense; for while he’s not sure how long he’s seen the Norma through a kaleidoscope made of stars, all he knows is that only Norma and Norma alone, with her bouncing blonde curls and glowing smile and stubborn but loving personality, has had the ability to unknowingly reach up into the heavens and pluck each and every star in the sky to create such a looking-glass.

And suddenly it doesn’t matter that he’s been nervous about getting married. It doesn’t matter that the whole arrangement is technically, when it came down to it, all for Norman’s benefit. It doesn’t matter that it has to be biggest, most daring law he’s broken as of date, December 8th, and that if he and Norma weren’t incredibly careful, both of them could face serious consequences. 

Because one second he wasn’t kissing her, and now he is, and the moment his lips meets hers, he isn’t sure how he’s gone this long without doing so already. There were the two previous instances where she’d kissed his cheek, one short peck and another slightly longer graze. That feeling of heaven, however, doesn’t compare to being able to finally, _actually_ , kiss Norma Bates. 

Her lips are soft and warm and welcoming and it takes all his willpower to not deepen the kiss in an attempt to stay in this snapshot of a moment for just a little while longer. She tastes like something familiar, too, and for a moment Alex is left confused at what the unidentified sensation he feels is. Then it clicks, and it’s not the flavor of the freshly-brewed coffee he’d grown accustomed to while staying at the motel that he tastes on her lips (though he swears there’s a hint of that there too). 

It’s happiness. 

She tastes like happiness because she’s just that: his happiness. Long-lost, gentle happiness that Alex hasn’t felt in twenty years.

As he pulls away, it’s apparent that the kiss wasn’t long enough for Norma either, for she follows his path of departure, seemingly seeking to close the gap between them. That’s enough proof for Alex that he’s given her something special in their kiss as well, and that reignites his previous spark of hope that maybe this marriage has the bearings to be more than just words on a paper certificate. 

Then he finally opens his eyes, the most beautiful sight of Norma smiling is waiting right there in front of him, and though it’s a tiny smile, it’s enough to get his heart racing again and create the random, incredibly uncharacteristic desire to kiss her again, harder, right there in front of Connie, the witness to their marriage on her left, and everyone and anyone who will watch, all to show world that he just married the woman he didn’t know made up his dreams. He promises himself, as he drives to the store to buy her a coffee maker – a subtle nod towards his personal memory of their first kiss – that if she ever tells him she loves him, he’ll tell her he loves her every day, for what’s the point in denying it anymore?

⋆⋆⋆

Alex thinks Norma might take off the ring when she’s not out in public, but he’s wrong.

Though he’s out of the house at work most of the time, he notices that she has it on in the evening and doesn’t reach to put it on in the morning. This causes him fall in love all over again with the sight, satisfaction and joy swelling from within, for he knows that his mom would have loved Norma and made an embarrassingly (but sweet) big deal out of the fact that he’d finally found someone worth giving her ring to.

It occurs to Alex on just the second day of marriage that the reason he loves her wearing the ring is because it symbolizes their marriage, and if he’s sure about anything, it’s that he loves being married to Norma. Even though he had strong reason to think he would from the start, especially when he couldn’t keep the smile out of his voice when he told her over the phone that he’d agree to her proposal, he didn’t think there was any possible way to love her more than he already did; but Norma has once again proven to him wrong about his feelings.

And it’s the day he watches her munch happily on her funnel cake at the Lights of Winter and hears her laugh at his promise that whoever has trashed her house won’t get away with it (because, as she said before, he _is_ the “big daddy of White Pine Bay”) which serves as a reminder that making her feel safe and content with him has always meant the world to him. Though his whole occupation revolves around ensuring the welfare of _all_ the town’s citizens, he’s decided that taking care of Norma is, in a way, all he wants to focus on doing for the rest of his days, especially since everything else that’s supposed to matter pales in comparison.

Slowly their marriage goes from a simple exchange of vows to something more meaningful. Their public appearances together are supposed to be for show, but when Norma drags Alex along grocery shopping to show him what “real dinner food” looks like, it doesn’t _feel_ like a chore for him to listen to her in amusement as she chatters on and on about why she likes one type of cheese over another, or watch her excitedly point to products in an aisle he’s pretty sure he’s never stepped foot down.

It doesn’t _feel_ fake when, after a morning of exploring and losing themselves in each other’s bodies, they decide to step into the shower together, which is kicked off with Norma gasping in horror at his 3-in-1 shampoo and then proceeded by her reaching up with outstretched hands to lather his dark hair with her vanilla and honey shampoo that is curated towards dyed hair (but he doesn’t mind one bit because she is _here_ and _now_ and **_his_** ).

And when she falls asleep curled up next to him, head on his chest, while they’re watching some chick flick starring Marilyn Monroe on her laptop – _I’ve gotta get her a real TV_ , he thinks – Alex believes, after years and years of chasing skirts and watching his own parents bicker for hours on end, that soulmates are real.

They have to be, because one day when he swings by the motel on his lunch break and finds Norma cleaning one of the rooms, who would have guessed his offer to help her will conclude with a sudden, absurd, but light-hearted pillow fight followed by a carefree laugh on her end as he pins her down to kiss her on the very bed they were trying to make?

They have to be, because why else would the boxes making up the crossword section of the evening paper be filled with incorrect letters that spell out messages like “I love you” or “Have a good day” by two very different handwritings on alternating days for their respective owners to find in the morning?

They have to be, because why else would Alex’s heart hurt like it was missing its other half when Norma died?


	3. Stars Gone Out

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All Bates Motel stans love this episode! (confirmed)

It’s dark out when Alex swings into the lot of the motel, the familiar gravel crunch sounding from under his vehicle reminding him of when he’d started to call this place home over the summer. He pulls up next to Norma’s green Mercedes, ignores the twinge of sadness that, when he glances at the vehicle, asks him if he thinks he’ll be able to regularly park there once again, and squints up at the house, sighing when imagining how Norma is most likely still incredibly angry at him for what he did to get Norman recommitted. Woman knows how to hold a grudge. 

Climbing those endless sets of stairs he finally reaches the porch, and when nobody answers his knock, he glances up diagonally to where her room – their room? – lies. From the portion of her window he can see that isn’t blocked by the porch awning, the light doesn’t appear to be on. 

“Norma,” he calls, not caring that it comes out like the start of an apology. While he might not be swayed from believing what he had done was right, for Norman’s health and his and Norma’s newfound happiness, he’s ready to try to at least talk things out with her. Space was what she’d needed after their argument in his office, and he’d been conflicted over coming to the house at all. However, guilt and sadness at seeing her in a state of distress when he’d been doing so well at making her happy has plagued him all day, so he’d finally stopped pacing in his living room, hoped she had cooled down enough to meet with him, and headed over. 

_Even if she doesn’t want to talk, at least make sure she’s okay,_ he tells himself while finding that no, Norma did not change the locks on him. _You don’t trust Norman alone with her, no matter what she says, and especially after he came at you with an ax._

Inside the house, Alex finds that there aren’t any lights on, leaving the whole first floor flooded with darkness, which he finds strange since it’s only fifteen minutes till eleven. Then again, he knows the place has recently lost heating abilities, and if that was due to an electrical problem, maybe Norma is keeping lights off in case of another house malfunction...? 

It’s quiet, though, he notes while realizing the complete absence of sound what is truly unnerving him. Normally the sounds of Norma preparing for bed or her light singing while moving from one room to the next can be heard, but there’s absolutely nothing. 

He tries calling for her again, peering up into the dark abyss at the top of the stairs, but gains the same response. 

_This is ridiculous,_ he mentally sighs while starting for the second floor, and he can’t help but continuously glance around as he does so, confusion on how it is still this silent with him tromping around. It’s not as if she’s not somewhere in the house – her car is here – but dispute the hour, the lack of flow from her energy is missing, she might as well be. He calls for her again...three time’s the charm, right? Letting his eyes adjust, the moonlight streaming in from the opposite end of where he stands illuminating the landing, he stares at Norma’s closed door, curiosity and now a new tingle of uneasiness taking over him, for since when does Norma sleep with her door shut? 

Alex attempts to calm his racing heart by telling it there’s no real reason for it to be acting the way it is, but his breathing has become labored nonetheless as he reaches her room and pushes her door open with a creak. 

The sight before him prompts him to utter a sigh of annoyance, for it’s obvious that the two figures laying down are mother and son, sidled up cozy next to one another, with Norman not actually in bed but simply draped on top; but he refrains the huff and tries her name once more. Knowing that she’s not a sound sleeper, a strong sense of anxiety begins to set in his gut when all is not only silent but also motionless. 

“Nor-” Alex starts, but then gives up mid-call because all of a sudden it clicks: the reason it hasn’t been hard to breathe since stepping through the threshold isn’t because of his sympathetic nervous system kicking into gear. 

There’s something wrong with the air. 

Though Alex hasn’t been in the Bates household in a few days, from his short visits to the past two weeks of residency in this very location, he can now sense the change in the atmosphere. 

_It’s too light._ There must be some sort of gas leak. 

Alex reaches Norma’s side in a few quick strides, though if feels like it takes a million, and shakes her shoulders. Through her thin nightgown she feels colder than he’s ever felt her, and when he can’t find a pulse in her neck, panic seizes every fiber of his being, causing him to barely think but act on pure adrenaline that ends up making him chuck the chair to her vanity through the window. Immediately the crisp December air rushes in; Alex knows that’s not going to be good enough.

_I need to get her out of this room._

Alex never thought there’d be a time when he didn’t like the feel of Norma in his arms, for in his opinion, she fit so well there. But she’s limp, complete weight, which makes it harder to carry, especially since he feels on the verge of collapse with the horrible, dark, little thought that _it might be too late_ circulating in his head. 

Pushing it aside, he lays her down hastily but gently on the white and red patterned rug on the floor between the stairs and the windows he frantically throws open. _No time to take her downstairs...this will have to do._

Then he remembers there’s someone else to save as well. Norman doesn’t get the bride-style transportation treatment, for all Alex can think about as he drags the boy out to the landing is _please be okay, Norma._ _Please, please, please. Just hang on, I got you._

Blinded with frenzied fear, Alex has to take a moment after starting chest compressions to remember how exactly to _do_ CPR; it’s been too long since his recertification in the skill. How is he supposed to do this? Isn’t he supposed to press down on the beats to Another One Bites the Dust? Or is it Dancing Queen? _How the **hell** do the rhythms of those songs go again?_

Alex doesn’t ponder on those questions, pushes them to the beck of his mind, and just concentrates his focus on attempting to bring Norma back to consciousness. Scarcely aware of the tears pooling in his eyes, he keeps his motion up, now shaking all over in the lightest sense of the word, breathing back to coming out in irregular, ragged, and raspy gasps, for _she’s not waking up._

“C’mon, baby.” 

Alex is far beyond the point of feeling embarrassed for crying, beyond the point of refusing to beg. He doesn’t take time to contemplate why he’s called her that, for before Norma he’d never called any of his many lady friends “baby”. But if he had taken a moment in between palpitations – either his own or the ones he’s trying to revive out of Norma – he’d realize, remember, it was because that he’d always gotten a reaction out of her when he called her that, especially the first time it had taken both him and her by surprise. 

_Alex smiles at Norma as she chops up a stalk of celery, her knife skills quick and accurate and fascinating to observe. He’s near her, leaning against the counter within arm’s length, simply watching his wife in silent awe and content, for he’s offered her a couple times if he can do anything to help, but she’s just shooed him off, but not enough to rid of him completely._

_After a moment more of this, Alex decides to get bold, a little playful, even, and takes a carrot from the cutting-board she’s working on. He takes a bite out of the end of it, and though it’s a tiny piece, Norma notices his antics and scowls._

_“Put it back,” she says, rolling her eyes._

_Alex takes her words lightly and takes another bite. “Whatcha going to do about it if I don’t?”_

_“Give it, Alex.”_

_He holds it up above her reach. Naturally, Norma doesn’t stand for this and growls in annoyance, putting down the sharp utensil to swipe at it with one hand, but with her back to the oven, she miscalculates how close her other one is to the pot of near-boiling chicken stock. Next thing either of them hear is her short shriek of pain, and guilt sweeps through Alex as Norma cradles her injured hand._

_“Oh baby, I’m sorry. Get it under some cold water, here-”_

_Norma seems to forget her pain and just stares at him, blinking in surprise at the new nickname, so Alex has to all but push her towards the sink._

_“What...what did you just call me?”_

_And she smiles._

Back in the present, Alex dips his head to the floor and presses his mouth to hers to practice mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, and he doubts he’s doing a good job, almost positive it isn’t helping, for he barely has control of his own breathing to be able to supply Norma with a respectable amount of air to adequately fill her lungs. When that fails to work, it’s pure desperation and what might be able to pass for adrenaline that pushes him to repeat the cycle.

_“C’mon, Norma. C’mon.”_

_Compressions._

_Cardiac resuscitation._

And then when he hears a cough sound from just a yard away, he looks up, eyes bright with not necessarily _joy_ that Norman is showing signs of life – in all honesty, Alex has forgotten about him – but instead with hope that if the kid was okay, then so Norma has to be as well, right? They were in the same room in the same room at, from what he can tell, the same time, so the unstirring, beautiful woman he calls his wife must be able to stir from her slumber…right?

So it’s in nothing but last-second optimism that he repeats his insanity (for isn’t that what doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different outcome is?), and the harder her tries, the harder he’s crying, the ugly sounds of anguish unrecognizable to the sheriff who hasn’t wept this hard possibly ever in his forty-two years on earth.

⋆⋆⋆

They say that when you die, your life flashes before your eyes.

Alex had never believed in such nonsense before, never given that idea much thought, for dying truly was the last thing on his mind, even when he’d been in combat, even in the midst of a shoot-out as a cop. But as the thought that Norma is gone sinks deeper and deeper into reality, there’s nothing else that can explain what he sees next.

They forgot to tell him that you don’t see your _whole_ life, just the parts that made it worth living for. The parts where you truly were happy and put the life in the word alive. For between each compression, a favorite memory of Norma is all that he can see in through blurry eyes, each one linked to the sound of her voice he swears he can still hear:

“I always felt safe when you were here.”

“Alex Romero, the big daddy of White Pine Bay?”

“And it’s like I’m watching a movie, but it’s not a movie.”

“Did you just say you were a unicorn?”

“I do.”

Then… “I just, um- _I love you_. I want you to know that.”

⋆⋆⋆

And then he stops. Not the sobbing, blubbering mess he’s become, but the compressions, for in that instant, he knows. He knows that she’s not going to open her eyes or take a sudden gasp of breath like people did in the movies. He knows deep down that she took her last breath long before he arrived, and with that last breath, those beautiful, illuminating stars have gone out with her, fizzling into nothing and leaving him in a miserable, muddle of darkness.

Though it’s not him who has died this night, his heart has died along with hers, for she’d captured it a long time ago and run off with it. 

So he moves his face to hers, misaligning them on purpose so his eyes are pressed against her lips as if his tears are as magical as he’d promised her he was just yesterday and will be able to somehow do what his mouth couldn’t mere seconds ago. With the last of his strength he pulls her into his arms to make sure he can hold what’s left of her close to him, kisses her briefly even though she can’t feel it, and finally gains enough composure to pull out his phone.

He tosses it towards Norman, who muttered, “Mother?” just a moment ago, to which Alex had snapped, “Yeah, who do you think this is?”, only to recognize his voice was far from suitable for conversation.

“Is she…”

“Call an ambulance.”

“But is she-”

“Just call the damn hospital! Number’s 911; isn’t that hard!”

Any hint of sorrow that Alex has felt for Norman can’t be found, which sounds terrible but remains true, but when it’s obvious that Norman is practically paralyzed in place, Alex growls in annoyance and calls the number himself; and it’s one of the hardest things he’s done, being on the other end of the phone like that.

And while they wait for help to arrive, Alex whispers “I'm sorry, I'm sorry, _I'm so, so sorry_ ” over and over to Norma, unable to stop stroking her face.

At first he doesn't know what exactly he’s remorseful for; it's not like _he_ killed her. Alex Romero rarely utters those two words together, and when he does it’s for little things like bumping into someone or handing the cashier at the supermarket the wrong change. However, soon it becomes clear, for he remembers the moment in the wake of his mother’s death when he’d become part of the police force to vow to protect people. Now he’s apologizing, feeling like a failure, because that dark voice is back, sneering, _you couldn’t even save the person you love most._ _All the hard work, everything you’ve done for her – from covering for Shelby’s death to marrying her – straight down the drain. You wouldn’t think killing for her would turn out to actually be the simplest thing you did in the name of taking care of her._

He sits there, cradling Norma’s body that he couldn’t save no matter how hard he tried, wishing for the first time in his life that the God his mother believed in was real and would extend a hint of mercy, even though he’s done nothing in his life to deserve it. He’s convinced he deserves nothing, not when _She said she always felt safe with you and that you made her feel calm, and what happened? Your last conversation she was anything but calm and you hadn’t been able to protect her_ echoes over and over in his head as the paramedics’ voices of “Sir, you have to let go now” fade somewhere into the background noise.

In a haze, Alex stumbles outside and watches them hoist Norma's body (with more force than he thinks is necessary) into the ambulance, and the wail of the damn thing is exactly how he wants to express himself now as it takes his wife further and further away from him. While he knows it's only going to the local hospital, there’s a part of him which recognizes that Norma will never step foot back into the house she so badly wanted to redecorate with his help, and the guilt starts to chew away at him once more, but this time it’s taken on a new form, a little something called blame.

_If only you had run up the steps to the house a little faster._

_If only you had driven faster – you're a cop, for crying out loud: you could have just turned on those lights and sped, right?_

_If only you hadn't waited so long to drive over. Hell, you shouldn't have even left her alone…stayed in one of the motel rooms or something-_

_If only you hadn't been crying so hard, maybe the CPR would have worked-_

The worst one forces its way into Alex's thoughts before he can stop them, and he feels horrible for even fathoming it, for he knows that Norma would have hated him with a passion for it, but _If only you had just left Norman in that bed – the literal, physical one, but also the one he'd made – maybe she’d be alive_ comes to mind with a bitter aftertaste, and it takes all of Alex's willpower to keep from pondering on that particular what-if, all for Norma's sake.

But he knows that nothing would have changed. Even his desire to channel all his energy into hating Norman can't keep his heart from taking on the burden of the biggest what-if that turns into a you-should-have: _You should have loved her more._

_You should have hugged her a little harder; should have smiled a little wider at her silly quirks you once thought were annoying; should have kissed her when she was least expecting it more often. Anything, anything that might've reminded her that you weren't giving up on her so she didn't leave the world – leave you – like this._

And then another gut-wrenching thought: _did you even tell her you loved her today like you promised yourself two weeks ago you would do every day?_

The winter air seems to bite at Alex a touch more as he struggles to answer his question, racking through the words of their last interaction, trying to find some positivity there but coming up empty-handed. He feels a tap on his shoulder and turns to see Deputy Lin motioning towards the house.

“Detective Chambers would like a word,” she says, her voice almost unrecognizable without the sharp, staccato edge on it, and Alex groans internally with the knowledge that if his most no-nonsense deputy is feeling sorry for him, the whole town is not far behind her.

“Okay, yeah, of course…thanks,” he replies, but before he can move a foot’s distance, she stops him. He thinks she’s going to offer her condolences, but instead she holds something small and flat down at waist level, obviously not trying to draw attention.

“The detective has the important thing, but I, um- I found this on the dresser along with what she has for you and thought you should have it. You know…before the forensics team confiscates it.”

The word "forensics" sickens Alex, but he takes what she has to offer and can’t resist but take a peek at what it can possibly be.

It’s a picture. Not any picture, though. It’s the one that had been taken at the Lights of Winter to be in the newspaper, but this version isn’t made of the same material. _Norma had gone out, possibly out of her way, too, to have a copy made into a real, glossy photo._

Alex tucks the image away, barbed wires encircling his throat once more at the sight of him and Norma beaming at the camera together, the memory of their thoughts about everything turning out okay causing him to tightly purse his lips in sadness before he murmurs, “Thanks, Lin. Means a lot,” and heads inside.

⋆⋆⋆

“Two weeks.”

It’s already hard to know that she’d only been his – and he hers – for only half a month, but saying the duration out loud causes a new wave of sadness to wash over Alex. It’s like verbalizing it is confirmation that yes, this horrible nightmare is real. Yes, he’ll never get to tease her about doing his laundry even after they were married, and yes, there will be no more chances for her to show him how skillfully she played her favorite pieces on the piano. He even finds himself missing “I demand to see Sheriff Romero!” Norma from the first few months of their acquaintance.

An envelope is slid in his direction, and upon picking it up, he reads “Alex” written in Norma’s curly handwriting on the front of it.

“Did you know about this?”

A sinking, dreading feeling temporarily replaces the sadness built up in his chest, for there’s a small bump in the envelope, and Alex thinks he knows what’s causing it. Countless times today he’s never wanted to be more wrong with his guesses, but as he unfolds the letter, something snaps, for other than the realization that Norma was truly gone, this stings like not a slap in the face but a punch to the heart.

His mother’s ring – the ring he’d looked at every day for months after her death – stares up at him. He feels like he’s failed his mom all over again, for if the ring is here, it means it’s not on Norma…not on her finger for her to sneak peeks at or for her thumb to play with when she thought he wasn’t watching. It being in his possession once more means that the “forever” it – _he_ – promised just hadn’t been enough. An onslaught of new tears are right around the corner, he just knows it, and he’s standing firm in his decision that no, Norma wasn’t reaving him and yes, he’s keeping the ring, for “This is my mother’s” is all the explanation he’s willing to trust himself to say without embarrassingly breaking down.

It’s only as he drives home that the déjà vu creeps up on his unsuspecting self. Theresa and Norma’s deaths…it’s all the same: The time of year, the time of day, the ring given to him as a farewell token, their last “I love you’s” to him are even eerily the same in a way. Of course the most obvious of all, their abrupt and shocking deaths, stands out the loudest, but that’s the thought responsible for him gritting his teeth and steering wheel a little harder. His mom’s death may have been a suicide, but Norma’s was not. He knows Norma truly was safe and happy with him, no matter what the monster in his head told him; and even if she hadn’t been, his conscience tells him she wouldn’t have committed suicide. No, her death is not on him, but it most definitely feels like it.

_This is going to be a long night._


	4. 36° Angel

Twenty times.

Alex calls Norma’s cell phone twenty times in a row the first night after her death. He knows full well that she won't pick up…the naïve, ridiculous dream that she just might dying a little more with each passing ring, but he does it anyways because more than anything, he needs to hear her voice. He needs to hear her one last time, even if it's just the simple message of her stating her name and telling him to leave his. (Oh how he wish he could.)

And then when he remembers about the motel office, he calls that number too and lets the opening loop of “Hello, thank you for calling the Bates Motel!” wash over him and drown out his muffled sobs as he lies in bed at night, trying not to face the reality that this is now the closest he'll ever come again to falling asleep in her presence. 

The next day after that, he gathers the all strength he can muster, all the courage he thinks might start to be enough, to go to the city’s hospital where Norma's body currently lays.

It’s cold inside the morgue. While it naturally would be since the location is in the basement of the hospital where no natural light shines, Alex can’t help but shiver, and he briefly wonders if it’s from the eeriness of being so near to dozens of corpses that are hidden behind opaque doors or just the temperature enclosed by the unfeeling walls that the flickering fluorescent lights paint grey.

 _I wonder how cold it is in here..._ he thinks briefly, followed by _I wonder what temperature they keep the bodies at,_ as he says, “I- I need to see Norma Bates”, not realizing the weight of saying her name out loud until it’s in his mouth, and he’s swallowing hard to keep his sorrow under control.

“I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to be in here” one of the two coroners starts uneasily, the lack of effort to answer him causing Alex to begin walking along the wall of rows and rows of compartments housing stationary bodies. “This probably isn’t a good idea, Sheriff-”

 _Not such a good idea, my **ass**_ , he thinks angrily _._ “I’m her husband!” he barks back in the rough, impatient tone he’d nearly forgotten how to use after marrying Norma. But there’s also an underlayer of pain because the ability to call himself once filled him with happiness now feels like a stab in his stomach, for what kind of husband leaves their wife alone with a sick, suicidal maniac? _“Where the hell is she?”_

Finding Norma’s resting place with help of the name Bates taped to the outside of the door, Alex pulls the rolling cot out and stares down at the white cloth that separates him and the greatest love he’s ever known.

With shaking hands he pulls back the sheet and immediately a leftover sob from the night before forces its way up his chest, as if it’s been waiting there, ready to strike, and Alex can’t do anything but let the tail-end of it come out in soft gasps of grief as he stares down at the woman who’s supposed to be here, living, laughing, _breathing_ …anything but lying on a slab of mental, motionless for eternity.

She looks paler than when he’d seen her last, and he mentally shakes his head in attempt to clear his mind from the memory of how her limp body had looked in the pale moonlight. _No, she doesn’t look like a ghost_ , he tells himself while the memory of how bright and alive she’d been the first time he’d seen her leaks into his head. _She’s an angel now, that’s all._

After a moment longer, he wills himself to pull it together long enough to fulfill his original plan: returning the ring to Norma’s hand. It belongs there. She may have taken it off, but the nagging feeling that she hadn’t wanted to has haunted Alex all night, therefore driving him to presently pick up her bare hand and make it whole once more. A tear escapes its confinement and runs down his face as he thinks back to the sight of Norma stunned into happy silence at that exact same action two weeks ago, and it’s at that exact moment when he decides that slipping the symbol of his commitment to both Norma and his mother’s promise isn’t enough. He needs to tell her that he loves her, needs to let her know one last time that she was loved by him to the bitter end, even if she can’t hear him.

Leaning down to meet her face, Alex cups the top of Norma’s head in his hand, the once bouncing yellow curls now lying flat and dull, and presses his lips to hers, the pang in his heart hurting just a tad more when he foolishly doesn’t find her warm to the touch. 

“I love you.”

There, he’s said it, but the three-word statement doesn’t feel complete – and it’s not because he whispered it. Deep down he knows that a love like hers, the love he felt towards her, will never present itself as an opportunity again, for it’s a once-in-a-lifetime kind of deal, so he promises her what she’d promised him, his sentence taking on the form of an echo of their identical wedding vows: “I always will, whether you’re here or not, okay?”

And with that, he genuinely hopes that there is an afterlife and that the veil between the living and dead is thin enough for Norma to be able to hear him and feel him stroke her hair one last time before he tucks the hand he’s been holding back to her side.

Recovering her face is the hardest part of his good-bye, for he knows he’ll never look upon it again. He hates that the last glance at her will be _this_ version of her; hates that he’ll have to fight to keep his memories of her smiling (at him by the second-story balcony rail) and crying (after telling him her past) and yelling (at him in his house) and laughing (after learning of his unicorn status) from ending with the sound of a metal tray sliding back into place, but he can’t stay there for forever.

Someone is whispering something under their breath after he nears the swinging mortuary doors, and he glances back, glaring, for he’s sure they’re gossiping about him. _The audacity of these people! They can’t even wait until I’m gone. Haven’t they ever seen a grieving man?_

But then the woman medical examiner meets his eye, and instead of looking quickly away with embarrassment as one does when caught saying or doing something they shouldn’t, she keeps eye contact and clears her throat awkwardly, shuffling her feet in place to compensate for the uncomfortableness she feels.

 _She have something thing to say?_ Alex stares back.

Without looking behind her, she asks her partner, “Um, are you sure we should tell him, John?”

Alex can hear that there’s an incredible amount of uncertainty and conflict in her voice, and his interest is immediately peaked.

“Tell me what?” he demands, now slowly walking back to the center of the room, eyebrow arched in perplex. If there’s something they know about Norma that he doesn’t, he wants full disclosure, for who are they to withhold information about his wife? _It’s practically my right to know._

“Well...”

_“What?”_

“Just tell him, Lisa.” John interrupts and sighs, sounding fed up but mostly bored, and Alex wants to slam his face into the cadaver that rests between them for his nonchalance.

Wringing her hands on her blue scrubs, Lisa swallows and says, “Well, as you know, we had to run a toxicology test on Norma-”

Alex winces at her name but says nothing.

“And um, well, we always run a particular hormone blood test when the, uh, _deceased_ is a female above a certain age.”

A stare is her response, for the owner of it still isn’t sure what she’s getting at.

“We found traces of hCG in your wife’s bloodstream,” is what’s blurted out as if it’s some profound secret, but that means nothing to Alex.

“What? What is that? Some side-effect thing from carbon monoxide poisoning? Yeah, yeah, I know that’s what took her life.” _Took her and that bright, beautiful smile I didn’t compliment enough away from me._

Alex shrugs, unimpressed with the medical examiners and their fancy jargon, and starts for the door to the basement once more.

“Human chorionic gonadotropin.” Lisa offers, and Alex glances back over his shoulder for the second time. “While we only found very faint traces of it, it _is_ the hormone that’s made only by the fetal part of the placenta, therefore supporting the possibility that your wife was likely newly pregnant when she passed.”

 _Pregnant_.

Suddenly all the specifics the coroner has told him are forgotten, that one word ringing over and over in Alex’s ears, too loud to ignore, demanding that he focus his gaze back on the steel door behind which Norma lies. It’s already poorly lit in the morgue, but the world seems to become a little dimmer as he thinks about the chance that his wife might’ve been pregnant when she died.

He swears he can feel his pupils dilating with the truth of what might’ve been lays so tantalizingly close yet so far. Time seems to stop along with everyone’s movements, stretching out into infinity as the room begins to spin, making him all but mentally collapse on the spot, in either shock or sadness or both…probably both.

A baby.

His baby.

_Their baby._

Alex staggers over to the nearest solid object in a haze, not caring how weak he must look; leans against the wall, scarcely noticing the coolness seeping through his leather jacket; and rapidly blinks back tears as ideas of _what could have been_ take form into images that fluidly fly through his mind, all stitched together like a movie.

He first envisions how Norma would have broken the news to him. He can see her wringing her small hands together after thrusting a positive pregnancy test into his large ones, that nervous, shy smile she’d worn when she first told him she loved him making a reappearance while she awaited his reaction. He can also see another version, one where she bluntly told him during dinner in that no-nonsense way of hers; and then yet another version where she would have come up with some creative way to let him know that she was going to be carrying a happy miracle for nine months.

_Happy._

Would it have been happy news to Norma? Would she have even wanted the baby? Had she known?

Questions that he’ll never know the answers to bounce off each other, but through the muddle of them, he makes the guess – and he truly believes it’s not out of desperation – that yes, despite the spontaneity of the situation, despite her age, Norma would have wanted to keep the baby.

His imagination kicks in again.

There’s the image of being able to wake up to the sight of Norma’s growing middle coupled with the sound of her laugh as he playfully scrunches her waist with his hands, something he liked to do when helping her dress. There’s the image of her sitting in front of that old sewing machine, but instead of making curtains, she’s hemming some of her favorite skirts, tops, and dresses so they can be maternity clothes. There are flashes of how bright, colorful baby toys and accessories that will never be bought might have stood out against the vintage decor of Norma’s dark maple color-schemed house.

And of course, Alex thinks while he attempts and fails to catch his breath, there’s the question of what the baby would have looked like.

_Would she have had the same nose you inherited from your own mother? Would you have been blessed to be able to see your favorite smile on not only your wife but baby as well? Would she have inherited your thick eyelashes, or Norma’s soft hair? What about eyes? Was there any chance she’d get big blue eyes like her momma?_

_She, she, she._ The same intuitive feeling which told him that Norma would have wanted their child tells him the baby would have been a girl. He can’t explain it; he just knows. And he doesn’t know why the gender of the baby matters so _goddamn much_ to him, for he can’t remember the last time he’d thought about kids, even just in general.

Alex had never, after choosing the bachelor life, thought about becoming a dad. He hadn’t seen kids in his future, and honestly? He didn’t care for them. To him, kids were noisy, bratty little nuisances if not raised properly, and he’d been sheriff of White Pine for long enough to see his fair share of them running around causing trouble and being of no use or help. Sure, maybe the babies were cute, and he’d had countless opportunities to hold them at town events – the mother’s always thought for some reason it was something he’d want to do for a picture – but they screamed and cried and pooped an awful lot from what he was told.

But the idea of having a little family with Norma, of being able to rock his own daughter to sleep in his arms, of proudly introducing his daughter to the citizens of the city…

The longing is back, and with that last thought, he wonders one last thing: a name.

What would they have named her? Something dainty like Lily or Cassie? Maybe something more serious-sounding like Bethany or Margaret? Or would Norma have taken into consideration naming their daughter after a namesake? Alex isn’t sure what to think about the possibility of a little “Theresa” running around, and for a split second he smiles at the idea of Norma christening their child Louise or even Norma after herself. But then he immediately thinks of the person she actually _had_ named after herself, and his face darkens.

Norman.

The thought of the teen makes Alex clench his jaw and eyes squint with fury. He’d done this. He’d caused all his happiness to be taken away from him in an instant. And suddenly the hurt comes roaring back in a new kind of way, for it doesn’t seem fair to Alex that his little innocent baby hadn’t even gotten the chance to see the world while someone as sick and twisted as Norman pranced around freely and did what he pleased in it. It doesn’t seem fair that he’ll never get to see Norma’s love for their baby grow to the amount – or at least close to, maybe even more – that she loved Norman.

And when it dawns on him that the closest he had and will ever come to holding his and Norma’s child were the times he’d held Norma – the last time being when his stubborn self had reluctantly let the EMTs carry her down the second story stairs – he can’t take it anymore. He has to get out of there.

Alex stumbles out of the morgue, up to the ground level, and out of the hospital, but he's barely thinking, just putting one foot in front of the other, hardly notices the stares and whispers as he passes by people who know him to be the stoic, serious sheriff of White Pine Bay. While he doesn’t know where his next exact destination is, he _is_ aware that staying in the hospital wasn’t going to do him any favors that aren’t named Heartache and Remorse. He's ridden with guilt of leaving not only the one but now _two_ people he’d lay life down for – one he hadn't even gotten the chance to properly meet and love unconditionally – in that dark, dreary basement. So in attempt to put emotional distance between himself and the fresh wound on his spirit that’s been ripped open, he turns to the infallible friend who had gotten him through the last loss of life all those years ago – the only thing, up until Norma, that had consistently made him feel better by helping him not feel at all: alcohol.

And someone has to call him a ride to take him home by the time the bartender won't serve him anymore, and in his drunken state of mind, all Alex thinks about is that _things can’t get any worse than this_ …but then they do.


	5. Two for "the One"

Alex doesn’t smile anymore, for life in prison is miserable. There’s really no other way to explain it.

He spends his days doing the same old, mundane things over and over: sleeping, eating, spending supervised time outside, working out, doing clean-up after meals, repeat; and while his old position as sheriff in White Pine Bay had often been filled with days where he did nothing but paperwork, at least back then, back there, he could expect something interesting to happen at least once a week that required his attention. Here in Oregon’s one and only medium security federal prison, there’s nothing new other than inmates coming and going, and Alex has only his mental countdown to when his sentence is completed to look forward to each morning.

Everything sets him on edge, too. The sound of forks scraping trays makes the hair on the back of his head stand on end. When other inmates yell to each other from across the way, he wants nothing more than to physically shut them up. Then there’s the time he’s on his weekly turn of dish duty: when one of the other men bumps into him, Alex could have let it slide, and he _should_ have, for the other man was noticeably built bigger and stronger – but it’s almost as if he’s been looking for a fight, an outlet for his grief, for a while.

He knows that said grief is consuming him in the worst possible way. It’s been almost two years to the date since his arrest, and not a day goes by without _her_ name flitting through his head. He knows in his heart that in no way can his infatuation with replaying and comparing his mother and wife’s deaths be healthy, and also that he should probably seek some sort of help.

The prison surprisingly does indeed offer psychologists on site for both individual and group inmate counseling, and the for a while after first arriving to the compound, Alex is so wrecked with grief over Norma’s death that he actually considers signing up for one of the sessions that’s offered two times a week. But then he never ends up going, for he decides that if he can’t even bring himself to say her name out loud in the privacy of his cell, he’ll never be able to discuss the swirling emotions which rage day-in and day-out within him without choking up and prematurely dismissing himself from the conversation.

In his soul he knows he should at least try to move on and let go, with or without professional help, but _how do you let go of the one thing, the one person, who you didn’t know you’d fall so hard for?_ It’s destroying him from the inside out, and though he can feel himself becoming that person, that same man he could find his father in, starting to show in his actions, he doesn’t care. _What’s there to care about when you’re in the slammer for five years, doing time for perjury?_

⋆⋆⋆

It doesn’t help that random things unintentionally remind him of Norma as well. The gross cafeteria food makes him miss her home cooking. After he obtains a split lip and cut on his eyebrow from that one fight, he’s reminded back to the time she’d been insistent on cleaning up his wound. When he rattles off his assigned inmate number, A49452, to the medic, he thinks about how numbers were used to identify Norma as well, for a series of them had been written on the label of her compartment in the morgue. These little reminders simply make the days even harder to bear than they already are.

The hardest two days in prison so far are annual holidays, and while one would think that the worst of the two be Christmas, it’s not – though it’s a close second. It’s Mother’s Day. The day had always been a pain in the past for Alex to get through, even though he never let on about it. Now all his hard work put into being indifferent towards it has come unraveled, for not only does he miss his mother every time the second Sunday in May rolls around, but he also now thinks about how he could have celebrated Mother's Day with Norma…how their child would be just over one years of age, had things played out differently.

Christmas takes second place, for it undoubtedly still haunts him because of the date being so close to the one that ruined his life and left him crabby with no room for “holiday cheer”. But the holiday also saddens him for another reason, and it’s for more than the fact that Christmas in prison flat-out _sucks_. It’s because he often wonders where the early Christmas presents he’d bought Norma are, if they still sit behind his house, or if, when the DEA most-likely raided his place, someone had taken the time to plant them…or at least returned them to the nursery. And initially he’d wondered if Norma had gotten him anything in advance (before their big fight), for she was planner like that when she wanted to be.

Turns out the answer to that question had been in his pocket all along, for it is only in prison when he first pulls out the picture Deputy Lin had given him and notices the writing on the back of it. His heart leaps with joy at the prospect that he has a few words of Norma’s to be able to read over and over, and it's like he can't read her penmanship fast enough.

_Dear future Norma,_

_This is you and Alex at the Lights of Winter, December 11th, 2015. Do you remember? You were nervous to go, but then it was all worth it, even with that horrible break-in after, all because Alex was there…is still here, actually. I can’t wait to spend Christmas with him, and I’m excited to give him his gift. I hope he likes it._

_Here’s to many more happy memories,_

_newly-wed Norma_

Then Alex reads the footnote: 

_P.S. I really love him. I ~~think~~ know he’s the one. _

And all the tears he hasn’t shed since stepping foot into this damned facility keep spilling and spilling and spilling out, faster than he thought possible, for in a way, _this_ , along with the note that had held her wedding – his mother’s – ring, is her last “I love you” to him. He knows for sure that she didn’t commit suicide, which is like a breath of fresh air, but he can’t stop wondering what in the world she’d gotten him for the holiday that should have been theirs to cherish together.

⋆⋆⋆

Alex shouldn’t have wished for something interesting to happen in prison, for one day he hears that he has a visitor, and it’s the last person he wants to see. Norman Bates it lucky that there’s supervision in the visiting room, for when he smugly points out to Alex that he’s very much alive and well and can relate to the ex-sheriff’s locked-up status, all Alex wants to do is demonstrate a repeat performance of the whaling he’d orchestrated at Norma’s funeral service after seeing _the_ ring so smugly offered to him. He hadn’t cared about desecrating the church of the God who hadn’t kept Norma alive, so why would anyone guess that he was above doing the same in a prison? But because he doesn’t want to make his situation worse, he simply tells Norman through gritted teeth that he’s coming for him when he least expects it, all while concentrating on breathing evenly as he repeatedly clenches and relaxes his hands.

The only time of the day when he feels like he _can_ catch a breath isn’t during day hours at all. It’s nighttime that he gets a peaceful moment to collect his thoughts and mull them over, even if they are mostly made up of memories of Norma.

He misses the feeling of her smile in the middle of a kiss and laughing against her mouth when she giggled as he tried to make her smile by tickling her. He misses the feeling of her face against his neck during the “scary” parts of movies, and the feel of her skin pressed against his as they became more and more comfortable opening up to each other and sharing themselves with one another in the most intimate of ways…

…so he takes the photograph off the wall at night, tracing the loopy Norma Bates handwriting on the back of it, holds the 4x6 paper to his chest in his 6x8 cell as if that a scrap of paper can replace the feeling of her, and pretends it’s Norma he’s holding and imagines her warm soft body in place of the cold cell air.

That’s not the only picture on his wall; there also a smaller one of him as a child with his mother. It’s not the only thing he holds onto at night, either. By some stroke of luck and after much complaint from his end, they had let him keep the ring. They’d said there was an issue about a choking hazard or something just as ridiculous, which Alex had scoffed off – for if he wanted to commit suicide it wouldn’t be by swallowing a gem. Something about the jewelry that had once been a sorrow to Alex now brings him an odd sense of comfort, for while it still holds painful memories, he’s far from home and it’s the only thing other than the picture which serves as the lifeline for him to find any joy in during his time in prison.

Still, after seeing Norman have the audacity to make the drive over to nonverbally, passive-aggressively rub it in in his face that, even at the expense at the failed attempted double homicide, things had gone according to plan with splitting up him and Norma, Alex’s hatred for the kid grows even more. He knows Norman took delight in seeing him, his “step-daddy” no longer, sit in jail torn up over his mother, and it feeds the pent-up anger which never seems to fully be satisfied with being released onto punching bags. The knowledge that Norma lies six feet into the ground without the _one_ thing he’d wanted her to have infuriates him to the point of hatching his plan to break out of prison and seeking his revenge.

While Alex had been dead-set on hurting Norman ever since that fateful night, he can no longer wait three more years to return to White Pine Bay to make things right in his eyes. Suffering drives his actions, and that unchecked fury has clouded his judgment – for he knows Norma would have hated him with every ounce of her being for what he has planned for her son – but he doesn’t care anymore.

 _Norma’s gone_ , he reminds himself on the ride that will transfer him to a more local prison. _Her input is out of the equation; now it’s just between me and that child of hers that needs to pay for what he did. Norman wanted to die alongside her? Well, I’ll make sure he wishes he had._

It’s funny how two weeks of marriage would impact two years of someone’s life as much as they have Alex Romero’s, for the ex-sheriff had never been so affected by one person before in his life, but like he’d discovered a long time ago, Norma Bates hadn’t been like anyone he’d ever met. He’d loved her, cared for her, smiled more than ever around her, and now he’s ready to kill for her - well, it's more for him, really - one last time.


	6. Trust Me

Bent on vengeance, Alex can barely feel the adrenaline course through his veins as he rushes past the gas station window and makes a beeline for the back seat of the car. He wants nothing more than to get away from the vehicle that’s been transporting him from once prison facility to another, and he knows that in order for his plan to work, time is of the utmost importance, but there’s something he needs to retrieve before taking off. Something that belongs to him. 

Laying on top of the box that has sat so tantalizingly close next to him this whole trip, Alex finds the manila envelope that houses the coveted, prized possession: his mother’s ring. Norma’s ring. He can remember rolling his eyes when they’d commanded him to turn it over, and had reluctantly done so as they told him he may or may not be getting it back later, but right here there was no later. There was only now. Honestly, there is no logical point in taking it, for unless he plans on digging up Norma’s grave like a psycho graverobber, all to slip the ring onto Norma’s hand for the third time, but he knows he’ll never forgive himself for losing track of its whereabouts.

Only after has he gotten into the getaway car does he reach into the mailing package to fish out that damn accessory that’s come to be an obsession for him to keep in his possession. Alex pockets the object and thinks about his mother’s smile when she’d given him it; but shoves the memory aside when he thinks about how disappointed she’d be if she saw him now, fueled to harm a boy that was barely younger than he was when she had passed. And as the car speeds across the roads Alex directs the frightened man to drive down, another thought occurs that sends shivers down his spine: _maybe part of the reason you hate Norman so much is because you see yourself in him. He killed his mom just like how your absence drove yours to her de-_

 _No, stop it_ , he all but snaps harshly at himself, but the thought won’t leave his mind until he’s standing on that porch about to enter this house – this damn house – in search of Norman, for he wonders what waits for him on the other side. Whatever it is can’t be any worse than the last time he’d been in this exact location, so taking a shaky breath, he pushes the door open and slips inside. 

It looks and feels abandoned inside, an exact replica of how he’d remembered it that fateful night, just...dustier. A lot dustier. And he’s reminded as he picks up a few photo frames that sit on a table behind the couch of how Norma would pin her hair back with a bandana and put on an apron she had just for cleaning the house – oh she had a lot of clothes; Alex wonders if they’re all still here – and how cute she’d looked humming happily while feather- dusting furniture surfaces. 

Back by the front door, something catches his eye. It’s a flash of light up on the staircase, brighter than anything Alex has ever seen, and when it took form, a startled gasp of both surprise and hope bursts from his mouth, for it’s her. It’s Norma.

Looking radiant even in just that silk blue robe he’d loved seeing her pad around the house in, the shimmering version of a healthy Norma that appears to take on a holographic form looks back at him from her ascending climb, almost as if she’s waiting for him to follow her. She says nothing with no facial expression and starts for the second floor. 

Common sense keeps incessantly reminding Alex that this is all in his head, that Norma is gone, but he charges up the stairs with newfound vigor anyways, not wanting to let her out of his sight ever again, even if it is merely a hallucination. 

He finds her sitting in front of her vanity, the glow of light that makes up her body illuminating the dark room, but before he can reach her, arm extended and ready to trick himself into thinking her lively self is still there, she fades into nothing. Becoming more transparent until Alex is left standing and grasping for the person who saved him just as much he her. 

It’s stupid, but Alex can’t leave. Physically of course he can, and since Norman obviously isn’t here, he should, but he’s exhausted and even more than the call to sleep is the ridiculous thought that if he stays in the room, maybe Norma will come back. So he curls up on the side of the bed, right on the same spot Norma had passed away on, and while most people would find it creepy of Alex to do so, he simply wants the illusion of being near her, his heart too tired to fight any more after his eventful day.

⋆⋆⋆

Alex dreams of Norma.

He hasn’t dreamed about her in weeks, and honestly he had started to become scared that she wouldn’t visit him in his sleep ever again. Why he thinks of her now he isn’t sure. Maybe it’s because he’s back in her house; maybe it’s because he’s fallen asleep staring at the spot by the vanity where he last saw the glowing ghost version of her. But the image in his head is clear and crisp, and even in the midst of his unconsciousness he wants to take the memory he’s nearly forgotten about and keep it forever in the forefront of his mind.

He dreams of his and Norma’s first time together. Or, more accurately, the moments right before they’d become one, the occurrence spliced into pieces that come and go quickly, flashing behind his closed eyelids, for it’s not the memory of sex itself that draws his attention. It’s how the range of emotions he’d felt in that moment swallow him whole.

_Alex feels Norma’s arm pressed tightly against one side of his neck and her soft lips repeatedly kissing the other side as he climbs the stairs to their bedroom, her desire for him radiating off her in waves. He’s wanted her for some time now as well, and it would be a lie for him to say that the first time he’d seen, from all the way down at room 11, her silhouette gliding in front of her window, he hadn’t felt anything stir from deep within. Of course, that had been then and additionally a pure accident. Never in a million years had he thought he’d be here, holding the woman who’d become so important to him, his heart, his everything; now he’s gently setting her down on her feet and waits for her to make the next move because the last thing he wants to do is scare her by becoming too forward or coming off as too demanding._

_Norma, however, is steadfast in her words that she’d wanted to do this and only this right now, for she grasps what she can of the material of the front his shirt she and pulls him for another searing kiss that rivals the one she’s given him just moments earlier by the front door._

_Alex reciprocates the kiss, and goes in for another, thinking Norma might want to connect like that for a while, but when she turns around, he doesn’t protest, his hands flying up to the nape of her neck, automatically knowing their job, smoothly unzipping the dress in on fluid motion. And while he’s not sure what prompts him to meet the zipper’s final destination at her lower waist, what urges him to caress the small of her back with firm but tender kisses, for he’s never wanted to please another woman – no, scratch that – never wanted to love another woman with the whole of his soul like this, what he does know is that he’ll do whatever it takes, even if it takes the rest of their lives together, to make sure every inch of her body and heart she exposes to him knows his appreciation and love._

_Then he starts for his belt, but Norma interrupts him, murmuring, “No, wait. Let me,” and fumbles with it adorably while moves his lips’ ministrations to a sweet spot right by her ear. Off comes his shirt and then the rest of her dress in a slow yet somehow still urgently passionate way. Alex feels a shiver when they stand before each other nearly bare, and it’s not due to the lack of clothing. It’s because it hits him that she is right here, offering herself in more than just a bodily sense to him, having faith that he’ll take care of her; and that should be putting immense pressure on him to make sure everything is perfect on his end…but the pressure never comes, for he knows that she knows he’d never intentionally hurt her – long gone is the day he’d told her he’d burn her to the ground._

_Moving them towards the bed, Alex eases Norma onto the mattress, following close behind with a small chuckle as he sees her already reaching for him, as if he’s planning on being anywhere but on top of her in order to properly show her the physical manifestation of his adoration. He barely notices how she’s subtly increased the distance between her legs to make room for him (or maybe that’s his doing), barely realizes how they’ve stripped each other of their remaining clothes, the last tangible barrier that lays between them and the union they both crave, all lost in how perfect she already feels._

_Alex takes in Norma’s face then, pausing to take in the features that seem to be introducing themselves to him in a whole new light. There’s a twinkle of anticipation in her blue eyes, the tiny dimple on her cheeks that comes out only when she’s extremely pleased, and the impatient curve of her lips which house the words, “Alex, please-” that makes him dip his head down to touch her nose with his, press his forehead gently with hers, and ask one last time “Are you sure you want this right now?”, just to make sure she nor he will have any regrets in this decision._

_Norma doesn’t let him finish his question before she’s nodding in approval, and then three words are uttered from below him that are all the confirmation he needs. Three words that aren’t “I love you” but are instead the fulfillment of his first meaningful request for her, all those years ago on the docks: I trust you._

⋆⋆⋆

“And why should I tell you where she is if you’re only gonna kill me anyway?”

That’s it. Alex has been listening to Norman act as if he’s Norma for far too long, purposely, too, all to mess with him, and he’s at his snapping point. After hearing from Chick (who had dared to not only enter the Bates house after what he’d done to Norma, but also was writing about her as if she were some kind of freak to be examined) the news of Norman digging up Norma’s corpse, Alex had mentally lost all sense of stability, his blood running cold at the knowledge that even in death his wife couldn’t escape the sick actions of her own son. It was one thing to kill your own mother, but to then retrieve her body from the ground and stick it somewhere out in the middle of a forest to preserve it for purely selfish reasons?

 _No, he’s not getting away with this,_ Alex thinks as his patience, which has been on thin ice for a while, finally breaks as an echo of the sound of Norman calling him “Sheriff Lonely Heart.”

The punch he delivers to Norman’s face causes blood to immediately start oozing out of the twenty year-old’s mouth, and the sight brings joy to Alex, for he wants him to suffer in all ways possible for what he’s done.

“Listen to me you piece of shit,” Alex snarls, pointing his gun menacingly to Norman’s forehead so it makes contact, the only thing keeping him from the desire to pull the trigger the even more insatiable need to find Norma. “I- I don’t know what kind of sick fuck digs his mother’s body out of a grave and moves it around, okay? And I don’t want to know about it or what you did to it.” After giving the option to kill him quick and clean or draw out the pain, Alex is slightly disappointed that Norman finally cuts the stupidity act and agrees to show him where Norma lies, for he isn’t joking when he says he has ideas on how to torture the kid that he’d love to see fulfilled. Not only has his background given him insight on how to make someone’s life miserable, but people in prison had always talked of the vengeance they’d commit once their sentences were up, and Alex had taken several mental notes.

It’s not as far of a walk to their destination as Alex thinks it will be, and as he watches Norman start to push slush aside from a slightly raised pile of snow, he thinks, _god this kid is taking his sweet time just to push my buttons one last time,_ and all but throws Norman to the side after being told that the process would go faster if he helped. “ _Help”, my ass_ , Alex thinks as he sets his flashlight down to begin the job himself. _You’ve never helped anyone but yourself in your life. Both Norma and I tried to help you by getting you help, and look at how you repaid her._

Alex can feel his fingers starting to get frostbite, but he doesn’t care. When he feels fabric under his touch, they begin to shake with the reality that Norman isn’t lying for once, that Norma really _is_ here, just millimeters away, and that he’s about to see put his heart through seeing his wife lifeless on a cold surface yet _again_.

Pulling the thick material aside – is that one of the curtains Norma had wanted so desperately to replace? – the sight of Norma causes Alex to sit back and swallow hard, for before this moment, he’d underestimated how badly he wanted to be reunited with her. All the longing he’d done day in and day out in cellblock five, cell 63, is paying off, but barely, because she looks – he hates to say it, but it’s true – terrible. She’s as white as the surrounding snow, hair nearly grey than yellow, but it’s her eyes that are the worst: they’re _open_ , for one, but it’s how they’re glossed over with a cloudy white-grey glaze that shreds Alex’s soul to pieces. Before Norma, he’d never had a “favorite color”, thinking that picking one color to deem as a favorite just for the sake of doing so was stupid. Maybe as a child the color green had appealed, but that was probably from being around nature to get away from whatever argument was going on inside the house. After seeing the many expressions and emotions of Norma Bates all captured in those eyes of hers, though, he’d unknowingly fallen so deeply in love with a particular shade of blue.

“I’m so sorry,” interrupts his trance, but Alex doesn’t look back, doesn’t want to give Norman the satisfaction of thinking that even an ounce of forgiveness will be thrown his way. Then- “For everything that happened. I know how much you loved her.”

There was one thing that really ticked Alex off when he was sheriff, and it was when suspects who had been proven guilty lied to his face. They always thought the could out-wit him, somehow weasel their way to freedom, and Alex isn’t stupid, for he knows that’s exactly what Norman’s doing right now: trying to atone for his sin with a simple acknowledgement that he’d been aware of Alex’s love for his mother, all in hopes that maybe if he said the right thing, he wouldn’t have to die.

Alex all but lunges at Norman, fury burning bright once more, and punches him over and over again to remind him that the deal isn’t off the table. _You bastard,_ Alex thinks between blows. _You weren’t even around to see how happy your mother was, how happy we were, without you in the way. You didn’t get to see her laugh as I spun her around in circles at the festival or see her smile at the ring you were so adamant on making sure she couldn’t wear._

Then he stops and reels in his anger enough to go back to focusing on Norma.

_Get to Norma. Get her out. Deal with Norman later._

So Alex bends back down, folding what he can of the fabric away from her, and starts making promises through the slew of tears making their way up his throat.

“I’m gonna get you outta here” _because you deserve so much more than harsh Oregon winter to be your final resting place._

And it’s when he touches her face that he finally breaks. With each stroke of her cheek that he knows fits so well in the palm of his hand, those same accusatory thoughts from the night she died come back to haunt him, reminding him that she’d been safe with him, once-upon-a-time, and that he’s failed once more, this time to keep her safe from Norman’s idea of where her physical self should be after death.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry…I’m sorry I— couldn’t help you.” He can barely choke out what he wants to say, the apology he knows she won't hear but has to say because he can't forgive himself, but he forces his voice to work through his blubbering. _I’m sorry that you felt like you had to take the ring off and write that letter. I’m sorry I couldn’t protect you and destroyed your trust. I hope that you know…I hope you know that_ “I love you” _is still something that’s true when I think about you and when I touch the ring that’s in my pocket._

“I’ll always love you.”

_Please, please trust me. Just one last time, baby._

And then something large and solid is knocking Alex to the side, the pain coming once more to the side of his back, and then a final time to his head, causing his vision to blur. When the trees above finally stops spinning, a barely-conscious Alex can’t feel anything other than a sharp pain in his skull, and when he can make out a figure towering over him, he knows it’s no use fighting anymore. Fighting what? Norman? The physical and emotional pain he feels sweeping through his body for what he knows will be the last time? He’s not sure, but as two gunshots ring out and he struggles to use his final breaths to spell out to Norman the truth, he’s glad that Norma’s the only thing he can think about, for as the world descends into darkness for the second time in his life, he swears he can see the one person who’d shown him the meaning of love. He sees her. He sees Norma. And it’s a beautiful sight.


	7. Hang Up the Phone

_Epilogue_

It’s not quite like waking up, because you have to regain consciousness to do that, and Alex doesn’t _feel_ like he lost consciousness when the scene before him comes into focus. He doesn’t blink rapidly to make the surrounding light slowly flood his vision; it’s just there all of a sudden, like someone flipped on a light switch. There’s nothing quite like what he’s experiencing, so as he sits up to take in his surroundings, he decides to label coming into the afterlife is equivalent to waking up suddenly from a dead sleep.

 _This **is** the afterlife, right?_ He thinks while staring at the forest surrounding him. _There’s no way I survived two blows to the head and two gunshots, not to mention that Norman would have finished me off if I miraculously had._

As he sits up, it becomes apparent that this isn’t the same woods which he’d spent his final moments in. The trees look similar, but his gut as well as his knowledge of the layout of White Pine Bay tells him that the tranquility and stillness of the atmosphere is a sign that he need not worry about keeping an eye out for Norman. There’s no snow on the ground, either, and after noticing he’s sitting on fresh spring grass under a sky that would be odd to see for a December in Oregon, Alex concludes that this afterlife is not set in White Pine at all. A thrill overcomes him at this discovery, for while he’d loved that town, it feels beyond amazing to be finally free from it and the painful memories associated with it. 

Finally Alex notices the state of himself: he’s wearing his most comfortable pair of jeans, and the black leather jacket he’d made the transportation guard give him is gone. In its place is his tired but true blue flannel shirt, which makes the corner of his mouth twitch upwards, for _the afterlife really knew what it was doing,_ he thinks while making a move to stand.

It occurs to him now that there’s no pain in his head. When he reaches up to the spots where he’d been wounded, he knows before looking at his hand that there won’t be any blood, for he doesn’t hurt anywhere as well. Fatigue from nightmare-filled nights or the burden of hunger has disappeared from his body, and Alex honestly can’t remember a time when he’s felt this alive, which he finds ironic since he’s dead.

Then an eager thought streaks through his brain before he can stop it: _since the afterlife is real, considering that you’re in it, does that mean there’s a chance Norma is here?_

Alex chides himself, following his idea up with _Of course she’s not. There must be a billion of these places, one for each person_ , but the thought won’t let loose from his mind as he traipses through the forest, pushing him to look for some sort of other moving, acting entity, though he tells himself that he’s simply exploring the place that he’s to spend the rest of eternity in.

Then, after wandering about a few hundred yards away from where he’s “woken up”, he sees it.

Well, not _it_ , but a _person_ far in the distance at the base of the line of trees where the woods meets what looks like a stretch of plain, glassy land, and even squinting he can’t tell if the person is a male or female. As he moves closer, however, it appears that whoever it may be is wearing pink, and at this, Alex can’t help but let a small gasp of hope and pick up his pace so his gait is somewhere between a trot and a skip.

“Norma?” he calls out, and his heartbeat, against his orders to stay calm, quickens with both anxiety and terror that it isn’t her. After the many sleepless nights following her death, he knows he’s not emotionally prepared to have his heart that’s so caught up in the possibility that forever might be theirs after all be shattered once more.

 _Please be Norma_ , he begs over and over to nobody but himself – well, perhaps to the universe, if it’s willing to listen to him one last time – and somehow there aren’t enough words to express, in the short amount of time which makes up the border between curiosity and knowledge, how much he yearns to hold her again.

Then what he’d been so desperate to hear on the second story landing reaches his ears, and it sounds like salvation: “Alex?”

And then he’s running the rest of the way, the overwhelming need to close the distance between himself and her drowns out all other senses, becomes pure adrenaline, and causes him to nearly trip, but he can’t care less. All he can focus on is getting to her before his mind can make the cruel decision that this too is all a hallucination, and it doesn’t register to him that she’s headed for him as well until they collide, two halves finally finding how to be whole once more.

He’s shaking and crying uncontrollably as he holds her tight against him, the love he swears he’ll never lose again, and only loosens his grasp when Norma squirms, gasping, “Alex, I- I can’t breathe.”

Making sure to stay in physical contact as to keep confirming that this isn’t a dream made up out of his imagination, Alex draws back slightly and takes his first good look at her.

Norma is wearing a cute pink and white sundress he doesn’t think he’s ever seen her wear, paired with a matching pink cardigan, and she’s positively glowing with health as she tips her head to the side, watching him try to swallow the breaths of air he’d missed out on while running to her as he takes in her appearance with a shaky yet happy smile. Her hair reaches her shoulders in curls, and it takes Alex a moment to realize that where he’s seen that hairstyle on her was on the day he’d moved out of room 11. The blue eyes he’d despaired over not seeing while hunched over her body in the snow are now what the smile she’s wearing reaches, and when she starts to talk, it takes all of his strength to not start crying again.

“Hi, Alex. I missed you.”

⋆⋆⋆

Alex and Norma were always pretty good at not interrupting each other when in conversation with each other, save the times they’d fought, but now, even though time is for once on their side, they can’t stop cutting the other off as they catch up. The exchange of news that Alex had been in prison and the concept of hunger, sleep, and time didn’t apply in the afterlife equally stuns them, raising more questions than answers, but even practically talking over each other can’t stop them from enjoying their reunion. The words that keep popping up and uttered over and over the most are “I’m so sorry” and “I love you”, which is the biggest relief to both (though they’d known the other was forgiven and loved without verbal confirmation).

As Norma explains what she’s done to keep herself busy – wading in the stream about half a mile away, making flower crowns from dandelions from the flower field that’s just visible from where they sit – Alex can’t stop sneaking peeks at her stomach because he can’t stop thinking about how close they’d been to starting a family.

_“What?”_

Norma’s voice jerks him out of his reverie, and she’s staring at him, looking slightly miffed as she places a hand on her midsection. “I promise you that I mean it when I say we don’t have to eat here; I didn’t gain weight from the last you saw me.”

Deciding that it was just better to ask than dance around the truth of it, Alex asks, “Did…did you know” so softly he wonders if she heard him, but by the pang of sadness in his voice matched with seriousness in his face, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out what he means, and it has nothing to do with Norma’s appearance.

“No,” she replies just as quietly back, and when she glances away and adds, “I’m sorry, Alex,” he feels terrible for even bringing it up because he hasn’t meant to make her feel the need to apologize for both her unawareness and inability to prevent something that was out of her control.

He immediately tells her this, and now it’s Norma’s turn to seek his arms, curling up in them as they both cry softly, mourning as one for the baby they never had; but there’s an odd comfort in being able to grieve together, and Alex knows it was the right call in the end to tell her the report he’d heard in the morgue. She deserved to know.

After a while he sits up suddenly, shifting Norma so she faces him, an idea of how to maybe lessen the sting, at least on her end, flitting through his mind.

“Are you sure you’d still like to be my wife?”

The bluntness and absurdity of the question must be what throws Norma off guard, for she blinks hard before letting out a small laugh. “ _What?_ Yes, of course, Alex.” She tucks a piece of hair aside while she studies his nervous demeanor. “I love you, truly. I hoped back then, after our fight, that we’d be able to work something out. I didn’t want a divorce, and now that we’re stuck here together-” she’s smiling when she says those words “-we really don’t have to worry about ‘til death do we part’, right? What’s this about?”

Alex reaches into his pocket for the ring, ready to put it on her hand for the third time (but this time in under happy circumstances), but his fingers close around nothing. Panic seizes him, for there’s never been a time when it hasn’t been exactly where he knew its whereabouts.

Norma seems to understand exactly what he was searching for because she says, “Oh, right. I don’t think physical objects transfer with you when pop up here, but you should know that I loved wearing it so much and all that matters is that I have you.”

“I’m…I’m sorry,” he replies, feeling awkward, but he knows she’s right.

“It’s okay, Alex. Really. I mean, I don’t have yours either.”

Alex’s head snaps up to look at her, the confusion written all over his face he doesn’t try to hide, for why would she have a ring for him?

Chuckling at his perplexed state, Norma takes his hands in hers and smiles, suddenly looking shy as she says, “I um- I took the liberty to buy you one about a week after we got married. I kept it hidden away in one of my dresser drawers because it was supposed to be your Christmas gift…you know?”

Alex kisses her hard then, a million lifetimes’ worth of happiness coursing through him, and when he pulls away, he’s smiling like a fool, but he doesn’t care. The stars are back.

⋆⋆⋆

Alex realized that while the ring meant a great deal to him on earth, when he was alive, it took dying to realize that it wasn’t the ring itself that was important. It wasn’t even giving the it away and watching Norma wear it that was the importance either. It was that he found love and even more importantly, his heart had learned to love someone. It wasn’t that Theresa hadn’t wanted him to stay single forever like he’d thought for so many years; it was that she’d loved him enough to trust him to dig deep down inside himself and find the gentle, caring spirit that only she knew existed and make sure at least _one_ other person saw it, too. 

That person had been Norma, and he’d entrusted her with his life without even realizing it. When she’d died, he’d felt himself break and become the shell of a person he’d spent most of his life before her being; but _here she is_ , for real this time, and he can feel his heart repairing itself when she smiles. 

With that epiphany, he is able to let go of that physical object that belonged in a physical world he is no longer part of, finally stops clinging so desperately to a symbol of the love he’d felt towards its two owners, just breathes, and puts his energy into fully loving the woman next to him. 

And as Norma and he cuddle in that sunny patch of dandelions, reminiscing the memories of the best times they’d shared and their plans for the next day – but just for fun because now eternity is theirs – he feels like he can set the ring back in its box, the phone that’s dialed the lifeline back into its cradle, and while nothing can compare with the sensation of absolute relief and happiness of being with Norma for all of eternity, it’s a pretty close second. 


End file.
